Monday, April 19, 2010

April Fool's Cupcakes-- Mock Spaghetti and Meatballs

This is the other fake-out cupcake we decided to make for April Fool's Day. I've already shared the mock TV dinner cupcakes. I thought this spaghetti and meatballs platter turned out pretty fun, as well. It was far simpler to put together than it looks and I have to admit, the meatballs looked so realistic, it was almost gross! The added bonus of this recipe was that the cupcakes tasted so good with the extra strawberry jam. They looked and tasted great!

1. Tint the vanilla frosting with the cocoa powder and yellow food coloring. You're going for a pale yellow, almost cream color. I actually added just a touch more cocoa powder for mine

2. Frost the cupcakes and arrange on a platter so they're touching.

3. Spoon the remaining frosting into a freezer duty Ziploc bag and snip off a small corner from the bag. Be sure to snip a very small opening. I found this to be the trickiest part of the whole cupcake. Somehow, I didn't snip my corner off just right and my noodles ended up being just a tad "flat." They looked more like Ramen noodles. Be sure to snip a nice clean, small corner, about 1/8 inch.

4. Pipe the frosting over the cupcakes, piling it slightly higher in the center of the platter, creating a mound of noodles. Be sure to allow some to hang over the edges. This part was really fun. The messier you pipe and the more you pipe, the better it looks. You want to cover as much of the cupcake surface as possible.

5. Place the chocolates in a small bowl and coat with some of the strawberry jam. Spoon some of the preserves onto the cupcakes. Then top each cupcake with a strawberry jam coated chocolate. It's cute if you leave one "meatball" to fall on the plate. Then spoon any remaining preserves over the chocolates and cupcakes.

6. Sprinkle the entire platter with the grated white chocolate. If you want, place a small chunk of white chocolate on a separate plate and serve it alongside the "spaghetti and meatballs" along with a cheese grater.

Welcome!

As you may have noticed, our blog's URL doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. "Zum Fressen" is German for "to eat." We grew up with a German Mom who cooked dinner every night, from scratch. We all grew up with a love to cook, but an even greater love to eat! We originally started this blog as a place to post all our family favorite recipes... the ones we would call eachother for every other week. We wanted them all in one place. Since then, it's turned into a place to share our favorite new recipes, too. We sort through all the recipes we come across and post only those that worked well and that we LOVE. Hopefully, you'll find a new favorite, too. Thanks for stopping by!